I don't feel entitled, and I think this emulator(s) is amazing. There is just something about the launcher that has always bugged the organizer in me: it only sorts in strict alphabetical order (though not ignoring articles). This shouldn't be a problem, except you have things like the various quest series by Sierra, where the first game doesn't strictly speaking have number. If you don't want to change it so it does, it comes after the other games in the series. Or game series like Monkey Island where the name of the game does not include a location in the series (except the second game, of course). It would be nice to have an option where you can include a "sort by" title which wouldn't show up as the name but would be used to organize the game list.

I realize this wouldn't be something that would be high or even on the priority list, but I wonder if it might be something simple that could be done quickly when taking a break from something more important.

The problem I see with this idea is not so much implementing it, as making it actually usable by a regular user: Sure, we could add a "sort_id" to every game's config entry, which you could set via a text editor, or even via the game edit dialog. But using that is very far from intuitive or user friendly.

There are various other ways one could hypothetically alter or tweak sorting, but none that I'd consider particularly user friendly...

What I usually do is just use the quick search field above the game's list. Want to play a Space Quest game? Just type "sp q" and you'll only see the space quest games.

fingolfin wrote:The problem I see with this idea is not so much implementing it, as making it actually usable by a regular user: Sure, we could add a "sort_id" to every game's config entry, which you could set via a text editor, or even via the game edit dialog. But using that is very far from intuitive or user friendly.

There are various other ways one could hypothetically alter or tweak sorting, but none that I'd consider particularly user friendly...

What I usually do is just use the quick search field above the game's list. Want to play a Space Quest game? Just type "sp q" and you'll only see the space quest games.

I agree that the search function is pretty easy and nice, but some people are obsessive (myself included) and like to have things organized to their liking.

Also, I don't think it has to be as difficult as you described it. It seems to me like it could be solved by simply adding a bit more "Metadata" to games' detection entries (such as company, series name, publish date, etc.) and adding a "sort by" drop-down menu referencing this data. Obviously grouping individual games together would be a bit more of a hassle, but I think if a few sub-categories are included it should be enough for almost anyone.

Well, when I install a game in the launcher, it takes me to the screen where I can edit the game's name already. If you just include another text box for "Sort As," perhaps with a default name (Monkey Island 3 for COMI, for instance), this shouldn't stretch anyone's idea of user friendly. Not to mention that I'd consider ScummVM users to be pretty competant with software. Those who aren't probably aren't using emulators to play their old games.

Anyway, I'll submit this as a feature request. Thanks for pointing me that way.

A hidden "sort as" value strikes me as extremely user unfriendly, actually. I can already see the streams of incoming requests where people complain about the weird sorting order that doesn't match up with the game names, simply because they forgot that they played with the "sort as" field. Or because that field somehow got corrupted, or changed by their dog, or whatever .

As for sorting by meta-data: That, too, could be done, and seems slightly less superficial and user unfriendly (at least as long as done properly, in particular, the value by which stuff is sorted must be made visible to the user). Alas, besides implementing this all, it would also mean adding this information about every game to ScummVM. Again, certainly possible, I just wanted to point out that this stuff is not yet in there.

fingolfin wrote:
As for sorting by meta-data: That, too, could be done, and seems slightly less superficial and user unfriendly (at least as long as done properly, in particular, the value by which stuff is sorted must be made visible to the user). Alas, besides implementing this all, it would also mean adding this information about every game to ScummVM. Again, certainly possible, I just wanted to point out that this stuff is not yet in there.

It would certainly be a lot of tedious busy-work, but I can't imagine it would be particularly challenging. With the way the engines and game detectors are set up, it doesn't seem like it could take more than a day or two of copy-pasting and editing values once a template was decided on.

Anyway, it's certainly far from a high-priority project, but I think a more robust Add Game dialog and main menu would be of overall benefit to ScummVM. There is nothing wrong with the way it is now, but it's always possible to improve and make the program even more awesome.

Sure, definitely. Ahh... if we just had more people actively working on this stuff... that would be *so* nice. Oh, and what would I do for having more folks help implementing many of the ideas collected in our feature request tracker, our Wiki TODO page, the Open Tasks list on our Wiki and the big pile of ideas people have mentioned here or on our devel mailing list for improvements. Not to mention the heap of ideas for all kinds of improvements I have floating in my head, but never bothered writing down because of the extremely small chances of anybody acting on them .

Alas, reality is as it is . If you know how to program, though, you are very welcome to contribute to any of these.